


Something's Missing

by rustyHalo



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Complications, Gen, M/M, Sadstuck, Time Travel, Timelines, Vague relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-13
Updated: 2012-07-13
Packaged: 2017-11-09 21:29:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/458643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rustyHalo/pseuds/rustyHalo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anything can go wrong with time travel. Any variable can make a difference. Just because an ant is an ant doesn’t mean it can’t change anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something's Missing

**Author's Note:**

> I am supposed to be 1) doing palancas and retreat letters 2) studying and 3) preparing battle plans for a war that is to come. Look, I shat some Sadstuck! And it was a failure! As to be expected from me, though. Just. Try enjoying it, I beg you.
> 
> (Wait how do you enjoy a Sadstuck)

No one understands timelines more than you do. The trolls say it’s millennia-old knowledge, but they know jack shit. No one’s gone through the times you’ve gone through yourself. 

It’s difficult, and it’s painful to time travel. It feels like life is being sucked out of you, and you can’t breathe, you can’t move until you get to when you want to be. You never got over the feeling of time travelling. It was _that_ painful.

You time-traveled so hard into the future one time, you saw after Sburb. Your chest was heaving, and you were sweating like a fat old lady in church.

Everything was back to normal. The only difference was you were hanging out with John in your college dorm room. You’re both on his bed, leaning against the wall and watching some downloaded episodes of Doctor Who. The show’s being ignored, though, because you’re explaining something to him and he’s laughing. You speak while gesturing with your hands, slumped against the wall. You seem to get frustrated and flail your hands wildly to make Egbert see your point. He’s snorting his ass out and leaning against your shoulder, a hand clutching his stomach and the other your leg for support. That elicits a smile from you, but you keep telling him what you’re telling him.

You’re standing off in the room’s small kitchen. The Dave with the John is future you, not _you_ you. There are a lot of timelines, a lot of different, twisted endings. This is just one of a million, _billion_ other conclusions, and all those happy endings are more like fantasies, dreams that you want to come true but find hard to reach.

You snap out of it and find out you were only dreaming a future scenario. You know it happens some time somewhere. You can feel it.

* * *

Anything can go wrong with time travel. Any variable can make a difference. Just because an ant is an ant doesn’t mean it can’t change anything.

Take right now. You’re on your back in a carpeted room in the meteor. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t sleepy. You wouldn’t be sleepy if you didn’t take the coffee with special pill ingredients Karkat made you guys to shut you all up. He wouldn’t make the coffee if Terezi didn’t keep ratting on him to make the Mayor the official new leader in the meteor. It’s an endless backtrack process. You’re stopping now; your head will just hurt.

But, see, if the pencil on the desk in the study somewhere in here remained hidden, something could actually change. Not everyone on the meteor would know a pencil even exists in here. But what if somehow, that pencil didn’t show up? Rose wouldn’t be able to write her tome-y shit. What if that pencil fell off the table and got kicked into the Mayor’s room? He’d use it to write some sweet new legislature for his city, and maybe even the ship. What if Kanaya found it first and went to show it to Terezi and ask her what it was? Ter’s probably going to abuse the new drawing material and eradicate all pencils onboard.

A pencil could change the direction of the ship, the events that could take place. You’ve learned to not underestimate even a single dust mote right here, right now. Each molecule, each atom, each proton, _each quark_ is important. It makes _now_ what it is. It makes _this_ possible.

* * *

You see yourself standing in a grocery. You’re eighteen years old, and you’re walking down your right side of the aisle with a cart and ten cartons of apple juice.

You walk slowly and read each label on the shelf beside you. Cereals, oatmeal, more cereals, chocolate oatmeal. You’re getting bored, but keep going slowly, keep reading labels.

John’s on his right side of the same aisle. You’re pushing towards him, he’s pushing towards you. He’s reading the labels on your shelf, too. Reading them out loud, you find out.

John doesn’t know you in this timeline. All your memories were erased after the game.

You don’t know if you know him.

Both your carts move slowly past each other, but the moment you turn your eyes to John’s shelf side of the aisle, he looks down and fixes the position of the bottle of ketchup in his cart that fell into a pile of marshmallow packs.

You don’t see him. He doesn’t see you.

You watch that Dave lose your best friend without even knowing it was already him.

You’re missing out on so much.

You want to call out to yourself. You want to shout, _Dave look down, Dave look for the black-haired kid, Dave say John_ , but you can’t. You can’t interfere in this timeline. Something is blocking your throat. Something is keeping you behind the boxes of tissue paper.

You pass by the same pile of boxes of tissue paper with a cart full of apple juice and boxes of Chocolate Rice Pops. You watch yourself stop, look at the aisle of breakfast shit and stare at something, someone turning in the opposite direction.

You hear yourself whisper, “Something’s missing.”


End file.
